Newz You Can Uze

It isn’t too often that you stumble across a DIY game console, but that’s pretty much exactly what the Uzebox is:

The Uzebox is a retro-minimalist open source game console. It is based on an AVR 8-bit general purpose microcontroller made by Atmel. The particularity of the system is that it uses an interrupt driven kernel and has no frame buffer. Functions such as video sync generation, tile rendering and music mixing is done realtime by a background task so games can easily be developed in C. The design goal was to be as simple as possible yet have good enough sound and graphics while leaving enough resources to implement interesting games. Emphasis was put on making it easy and fun to assemble and program for any hobbyists. The final design contains only two chips: an ATmega644 and an AD725 RGB-to-NTSC converter.

The games are all in the ballpark of the NES, graphically (Hell, there’s even an unofficial port of The Adventures of Lolo), and you can get one of these–fully assembled–for $35 right here.

You can also grab an emulator here and ROMs here.

As for me, I’m interested but not really interested enough to be bothered with the actual box you hook up to your TV (though I admire the homebrew nature of the project itself) as it would, invariably, become another victim of 90 seconds of use followed by a lifetime in cold storage¹:

ECM’s superfluous gaming gear overflow facility.

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^{1 If you look closely, back in the left corner, you can spy a SuperGrafx, an M2 dev kit and my pride.}

Wondering Where This Has Been All My Life

I’ll admit it: I squealed like a little girl when I first saw this scene¹

A Wonderboy RPG! Set in Monster World! OMG! *squeals like a little girl*:

What is “Monster World RPG”?

Monster World RPG (MWRPG for short) is a new free rpg videogame developed with RpgMaker2003.

MWRPG is based upon the Wonder Boy/Monster World games series by SEGA/Westone.
You need only to download the game and play it, there’s no need for you to have any libraries or other stuff, because the download has everything you need to play.

OK, so yes, it’s a fan-made game built entirely in RPG Maker. And, yes, it’s not a world-shattering epic, but it’s a Wonder Boy RPG! And it’s pretty well done for what it is! *squeals like a little girl*

The only real downside is it needs a serious script edit as English is clearly not the first language of the creators (I hope), but even with that slight speech impediment you can feel the humor and personality seeping through its pixelly facade. And it’s a Wonder Boy RPG! *squeals like a little girl*

Also: It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! It’s a Wonder Boy RPG! !!

Go play it now! Now! Go! Shoo! Play!

Quick Edit/Update:

This is the game from which it sprang:

Shion’s the hero dude w/ the blue hair, in case that wasn’t entirely clear in the above shot.

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^{1 Which probably means nothing to anyone but a very, very select few of extremely enlightened fans of one (kinda two) of the greatest Genesis games ever.}

Super Smash River City: Kunio!

All the BARF you can handle–and then some.

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking the world needs more Kunio and co. that isn’t some sort of weird sports game and, what do you know, the Internet delivers¹:

It’s called Nekketsu Dairantou (熱血大乱闘), and it’s a fan-made (doujin, in geek gamer geek² parlance) Street Fighter-style, fighting game done up in NES-colored make-up, starring Kunio and pretty much every person fictional character that’s ever starred in one of the eleventy-billion Kunio-kun games, from the immortal River City Ransom to くにおくんの超熱血! 大運動会–and trust me, that’s a lot of short, squat, CHI-style little buddies beating the living sh*t out of one another though, as this is Japanese, there is a shocking lack of BARF that Western gamers will need to learn to live without.

Best of all, it’s free! Worst of all, it doesn’t seem to want to work properly with my USB Saturn pad, so I’ve been relegated to the cludgy 360 pad and now the keyboard is looking like a good bet but, hey, who cares about my problems when you have this game to play, so…go play it! Now!

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^{1 In just shy of a decade, if you don’t count the GBA port of the original RCR.
2 Hey, they’re the same thing, though some most of you would deny it.}

Megaman Cubed

They make you solve this in Hell so you can move onto more pleasant things: like dips in lakes of fire or genital pulping via sledgehammer

Rubik’s Cubes haven’t been cool since they were all the rage when I was a very little kid¹, but this is still kinda interesting:

All the bosses from the NES Megaman series all make an appearance on this twist of a classic puzzle game. This cube is covered with boss selection screens from Megaman games 1 through 6. Check my other auction to see the other video game scenes I have available. Cube is about 2.5 in square.

Remember all the fun you used to have with one of these? And all the amazing solutions like ‘dismantle it and put it back together in a fit of rage and frustration from which it never quite worked right again’? Or ‘peel off the stickers and and rearrange them as ‘solved’ if you could ever get them to stick right again’? Yup, good times, and now you can bring in the added ‘fun’ of modern-day Megaman to the mix, but at least this cube gives you unlimited lives and continues until you take your own in abject frustration! Fun!¹

Oh, and btw, there’s one for Mario, too, in case too much Megaman gives you a rash.

Note: don’t say you love Rubik’s, CHI, or you will confirm something I’ve long-suspected about these infernal devices!

h/t: Tomopop (thanks, I think)

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^{1 And speaking of fun: that Cube cartoon was about the worst Saturday AM program, pretty much ever–I blame it, directly, for Ruby-Spears eventual demise a decade-plus later.}

It’s Supposed To Look Like That

It’s called Kolonia Outbreak, and it has a very slick, retro-riffic, vibe:

It’ll have five levels and the main twist is that enemy ships will destroy your mothership (off-screen) if you let too many fly past the left edge of the screen, so it’s imperative that you kill ‘em all unless you want your wife, child and dog to die a fiery death. (I may have made that last part up.)

It’s built in Game Maker (pretty handy tool, that) and will be short (but sweet!), clocking in at 20 minutes per run, though it will have a swath of optional modes to make sure you get your, uh, well, it’s free, so if you’re going to complain you probably shouldn’t.¹

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^{1 No doubt someone will complain anyway because that’s what kids these days do: complain. About everything. All the time. Because it’s hard being a kid with a cell phone. And an iPod. And three game consoles. And high speed Internet. And not having to have a job because it might actually teach them that cell phones, ipods, game consoles and high speed internet don’t come from the parent fairy. For the rest of your miserable, bitchy, life.2
2 I, on the other hand, complain about complainers complaining which, at least in my self-serving worldview, makes my complaining more refined and beyond reproach, so don’t you go complaining about it!}

Pixel-Gazing

I think this is interesting (at least what some of the interviewees say) but it does set off my art doofus, navel-gazing, alarms at full blast:

Worth a view, however, if you have any interest in pixel art and/or chiptunes.

A Megarockin’ Demake: Megman 8 NES

Less anime, more pixels

(OK, technically it’s Rockman 8 FC, but this being the land of Megaman and NES, well, you get the idea…)

Anyway, there was a decent amount of chatter a few months back about the Rockman 7 demake¹ but, curiously, naught but a peep about the Rockman 8 demake, so I’m going to remedy that right now:

So, yeah, basically it’s Megaman 8 (late of the Saturn and PlayStation) tossed into the oven until it came out, Shrinky-Dinked, as a Famicom² game.

It’s not complete yet, but it is on ‘beta’ 2.5 which you can grab here. (NOTE!: it’s beta and it may not work or may crash or whatever, so use at your own risk!) And there’s lots of chit-chat on 7 and 8 here.

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1 When you take a game from a newer platform and redo it based on the limitations of an older one, you have what is known as a demake.
2 That’d be what the NES was known as in Japan, people with lives.

More Retro Than Megaman 9 & 10

Eat your heart out Megaman 9 & 10!

And you thought new Jaguar games were the height of obscure video game arcana:

“His Dark Majesty” is a story-driven turn-based strategy game that takes the core elements of Advance Wars and The Battle for Wesnoth. The game is free to download.

The features:

*Single player campaign with interesting story in 23 chapters.
*Challenging and fast artifical intelligence.
*26 different units with unique features and abilities, including flying units, water units, mages and beasts.
*10 characters that help you or challenge you during the game.
*Graphics, music and sound effects by the best 8bit artists.
*Intro and outro scenes.
*Intuitive user interface.
*In-game hint system that teaches you how to play.
*Works on a 8-bit Atari computer which has 64KB of memory and 1.77 MHz CPU!

I’ll take their word for it running on an actual Atari computer, but it certainly was inspired by some good games, though I’d say Wesnoth¹ was inspired by Master of Monsters² and, thus, so was this game to make it a bit more anal accurate:

You can get the game here and run it on an Atari 800 emulator.

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1 Solid game but not as good as those that inspired it.
1 Master of Monsters (on Genesis) is still a good game, even today–go play it! (And when you’re done w/ that, grab Dark Wizard on SegaCD.)